by James Millar
The Union oversaw Soviet literary journals and ran its own publishing house, Sovetskii pisatel. It organized meetings where writers were encouraged to discuss themes favored by the Party, and local chapters sometimes held preliminary readings of members’ works. Its main task, however, was to reward or punish writers, depending on their level of cooperation with the Party’s agenda. The Union controlled many aspects of its members’ everyday lives, from housing, medical care, and vacations, to access to consumer goods; the quality and extent of these benefits depended on writers’ cooperation. Rewards could be considerable. As a result, election to the Union was a coveted prize.
On the other hand, the Union could publicly censure members or prevent the publication of their work. Under Stalin, Union leaders were expected to sanction members’ arrest or execution. After 1953, however, the Union’s worst sanction was expulsion from its ranks. Not only were expelled members deprived of access to Union resources, but they could no longer publish in the Soviet Union. Only Union members could engage in writing as their main profession. The poet Joseph Brodsky, who was not a Union member, was arrested in 1964 as a social parasite.
The Writers’ Union provided the template for other creative unions, such as those for composers, filmmakers, and artists. The Union’s influence ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union, though some branches have reconstituted themselves. The
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UNION OF STRUGGLE FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOR
Russian Federation branch has become a bastion of extreme nationalism. See also: BRODSKY, JOSEPH ALEXANDROVICH; GORKY, MAXIM
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brown, Edward J. (1982). Russian Literature Since the Revolution, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Garrard, John and Carol. (1990). Inside the Soviet Writers’ Union. New York: The Free Press. Soviet Writers’ Congress. (1934). The Debate on Realism and Modernism in the Soviet Union. London: Lawrence and Wishart, Ltd.
BRIAN KASSOF
UNION OF STRUGGLE FOR THE EMANCIPATION OF LABOR
Although preceded by several smaller groups, the Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class was the first important Marxist revolutionary organization founded inside Russia in the 1890s. Established in 1895 in St. Petersburg, it adopted its permanent name in December of that year. Its twenty or so members, mainly students and student-age intellectuals, included future leaders of Social Democracy, the movement that gave birth to Bolshevism, Menshevism, and the October Revolution. Among them were Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin), the future Bolshevik, and Iuly Tsederbaum (Martov), the future Menshevik. Some workers were associated with the Union, but not with membership rights.
During its first years the Union’s most noteworthy activity was the distribution of agitational leaflets to Petersburg workers in support of their strike actions. As a matter of caution, the Union tended to avoid leaflets that were overtly political or revolutionary, but because strikes were still illegal, even leaflets confined to workers’ economic grievances were treated as acts of rebellion by the police. In the winter of 1895-1896 and again that summer, the Union was weakened by arrests, anticipating many more arrests and hence frequent turnovers in its membership and a weakening of its effectiveness. Nevertheless, it continued functioning, and in early summer 1896 and January 1897 it played a major role in supporting the milENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY itant textile strikes that forced the government to recognize the power of workers and to reduce the length of the workday (law of June 2, 1897). During this period the Union spawned similar organizations in other cities and maintained contact with revolutionaries abroad.
In 1896 and 1897 the successes of the Petersburg workers’ movement precipitated conflicts within the Union. Younger members (molodye) believed that the time was ripe to open the organization’s ranks to worker representatives chosen by participants in the grassroots labor movement, while the somewhat older “veterans” (stariki), including exiled founders of the Union such as Lenin, while not opposing the admission of individual workers who met their political and ideological standards, balked at the admission of workers chosen by worker groups lest their presence dilute the Union’s political ideology. Tensions over this issue persisted, but as Lenin and the stariki became less influential, the organization became increasingly worker-friendly. From 1898 to 1902 it was run mainly by worker-phile Marxists whose position was subjected to intense and exaggerated criticism by Lenin, Martov, and others, who accused it of economism. Although the influence of the Union waxed and waned, it managed to survive this period of internal disagreement, rivalry, and fragmentation among Russia’s Marxists, remaining a focal point of organized Social Democracy in St. Petersburg. Until the summer of 1902, when it briefly and tentatively adhered to the organization “Iskra”-then dominated by Leninist fears of worker spontaneity-the Union was mainly a close ally of workers’ organizations. By 1903, however, its independent identity was lost, as its niche in the organizational life of Russian Marxism became indistinguishable from that of the Petersburg Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party. See also: BOLSHEVISM; MENSHEVIKS; SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC WORKERS’ PARTY; WORKERS
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Frankel, Jonathan, ed. (1969). Vladimir Akimov on the Dilemmas of Russian Marxism, 1895-1903. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Haimson, Leopold H. (1955). The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keep, John L. H. (1963). The Rise of Social Democracy in Russia. London: Oxford University Press.
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Pipes, Richard. (1963). Social Democracy and the St. Petersburg Labor Movement, 1885-1897. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wildman, Allan K. (1967). The Making of a Workers’ Revolution: Russian Social Democracy, 1891-1903. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
REGINALD E. ZELNIK
UNION TREATY
The Union Treaty, often referred to as the new Union Treaty, represented an attempt by Soviet party leader and president Mikhail Gorbachev to renegotiate the terms of the original treaty that established the USSR in December 1922 in the hope of precluding the disintegration of the country. The first of several drafts of the new treaty was made public in November 1990, but it was never signed.
The notion that a new Union Treaty was necessary to redress the balance between the central authorities in Moscow and the fifteen constituent republics of the USSR was first advanced in the Baltic republics in 1988. By early 1990 even the conservative party leadership in Ukraine recognized that a new Union treaty would be required. Initially Gorbachev and his team resisted demands for a new basic document that would give the republics more rights and prerogatives within the Soviet federation. At the long awaited plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU, convened in September 1989 to discuss interethnic relations, the platform adopted by the party on nationalities policy specifically rejected the need for a new Union treaty, arguing that the Soviet constitution itself was a treaty document and that it was sufficient to guarantee the rights of the republics.
Secessionist pressures in the republics, however, particularly in the Baltic states, forced Gorbachev to change his course. In February 1990 both Estonia and Lithuania demanded that bilateral negotiations begin to restore their independence. In March Lithuania declared outright that it had reestablished independence.
The first indication that Moscow was prepared to consider a new federative arrangement came at the February 1990 plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In his report to the plenum, Gorbachev, although not conceding that a new document should be drawn up, referred to the need for a further development of the treaty principle and
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suggested that different constitutional arrangements were possible with individual republics. But it was not until mid-June of that year that the USSR Council of the Federation-a body created the previous March and initially composed of the presidents or parliamentary chairmen of the fifteen Union republics-decided to s
et up a working group of representatives from the Union republics to draft the treaty. Toward the end of the month the working group held its first session.
The decision to begin work on a new Union Treaty was prompted by the belated realization that the relatively democratic parliamentary elections held in the republics in the spring would result in legislative bodies that would be much more forceful in defending their national rights and much less willing to compromise with Moscow than their predecessors. Interestingly the Council of the Federation acted on the same day (June 12) that the Russian republic proclaimed its sovereignty. In the meantime, pressure had been building in the republics, most of which were no longer satisfied with a looser federation and were now insisting on confederation. The Baltic representatives, for their part, refused to even participate in the working group.
The first draft of the new Union Treaty was made public at the end of November 1990. It consisted of a brief introduction and three sections devoted to (1) fundamental principles, (2) the structure of the Union, and (3) the organs of power and administration. The draft omitted references to socialism and proposed that the country be renamed the Union of Sovereign Soviet Republics. It enhanced the role of the Council of the Federation, which was upgraded from a consultative body to a policymaking organ with the power to make decisions, and abolished the USSR Congress of People’s Deputies. Although the document contained some concessions to the republics that had been legislated earlier in the year, it fell far short of the expectations that had already been voiced by almost all of the republics. Most importantly the draft was completely out of step with the sovereignty declarations of the republics and it continued to retain the federative principle. It also upgraded the status of the autonomous units, most of which were in the Russian republic. This was seen as a calculated step directed against the Union republics. In sum, the new draft treaty was very much a product of decisions made by the central leadership rather than an agreement between the republics and the center.
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UNION TREATY
By the end of 1990 the three Baltic republics, Armenia, and Georgia had either declared their independence or stated that they would regain independence after a transitional period-that is, they were not prepared to sign the new Union Treaty under any circumstances. Most of the autonomous formations had declared sovereignty. In Ukraine student demonstrations in October brought down the government and resulted in a parliamentary decision not to sign a new Union treaty until the political and economic situation in the republic was stabilized and a new constitution was adopted. In practice this meant indefinite postponement. Once again Gorbachev was offering too little, too late. Gorbachev seems not to have understood the nature of the national mobilization that was rapidly gaining momentum throughout the Soviet Union, confidently predicting that the new Union Treaty would be signed by the end of the year. In December he gained approval from the Congress of People’s Deputies to hold a referendum on a renewed federation on March 17, 1991, the results of which he hoped would pressure the republics into signing a new treaty.
A second draft of the treaty, which gave more rights to the republics but still retained the federal structure, was published in early March and sent to the republics for approval. It was the product of negotiations among eight Union republics (the RSFSR, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan), over a dozen autonomous units, and representatives of the center; Azerbaijan participated as an observer. The document was immediately dismissed by the Russian and Ukrainian leaders, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kravchuk. Although the referendum yielded a 76 percent majority in favor of a renewed federation (the Baltic states, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova boycotted the vote), negotiations on the new Union Treaty remained stalled. In response Gorbachev convened a meeting in Novo-Ogarevo outside of Moscow on April 23 with representatives of the nine Union republics that took part in the referendum. The result, a five-point statement known as the 9+1 agreement, was considered to be a major breakthrough to the extent that it recognized the sovereignty of the republics and recognized the need for a cardinal increase in their role. In the final analysis, however, it was nothing more than an agreement about the need for an agreement. In June the Ukrainian parliament ruled that it would postpone negotiations until after mid-September. The ensuing negotiations throughout the summer in Novo-Ogarevo, commonly referred to as the NovoENCYCLOPEDIA OF RUSSIAN HISTORY Ogarevo process, were difficult and contradictory, but an agreement was finally reached that five republics (the RSFSR, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan) would initial the draft treaty on August 20; Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, and Turkmenistan said they would sign in September. The abortive coup in Moscow on August 19, whose organizers wanted to forestall the signing of the treaty, effectively brought the Novo-Ogarevo process to an end.
In the radically transformed political situation after the attempted coup, with Gorbachev’s standing severely diminished and one after another of the republics declaring their full independence, prospects for a new Union Treaty seemed remote. In particular, Ukraine’s declaration of independence on August 24 stunned observers both within and outside the USSR. Thereafter, Ukraine refused to partake in any discussions about the future of the country until after its referendum on independence scheduled for December 1. Nevertheless, Gorbachev pressed ahead, threatening to resign and predicting global catastrophe if a new treaty was not signed. In October he and the leaders of eight republics, including Yeltsin, issued an appeal to the Ukrainian parliament to reconsider. Ukrainian lawmakers responded that they would not entertain the prospect of being included in another country. By November Kravchuk was saying that a new Union Treaty was nonsense.
Russia, in contrast, continued to support the idea of some kind of union until the very end. In mid-November it agreed in principle (along with Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Azerbaijan) to sign the latest version of the treaty, which now foresaw a confederation called the Union of Sovereign States. The text was published by Izvestia on November 25. On the same day, seven republics met again with Gorbachev-this time Azerbaijan was absent but Uzbekistan was present-who expected the draft to be signed by those attending. Instead the session broke up in rancor and the representatives of the republics revised the text once again, without Gorbachev.
After December 1, 1991, when more than 90 percent of Ukraine’s voters endorsed their parliament’s independence declaration, discussion about a new Union treaty became irrelevant. The following week the Soviet Union ceased to exist. See also: AUGUST 1991 PUTSCH; UNION OF SOVEREIGN STATES
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beissinger, Mark R. (2002). Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hahn, Gordon M. (2002). Russia’s Revolution from Above, 1985-2000: Reform, Transition, and Revolution in the Fall of the Soviet Communist Regime. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Transaction Publishers. Solchanyk, Roman. (2001). Ukraine and Russia: The Post Soviet Transition. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little-field.
ROMAN SOLCHANYK
UNITED NATIONS
The United Nations, successor to the League of Nations, was conceived and created by the allies during World War II. In 1944 the USSR and the United States, with other major nations, met at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., to plan a postwar organization that would provide a forum for the settlement of disputes. Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill solidified plans for the United Nations at Yalta (1945), compromising on substantive issues regarding voting procedures, territorial trusteeships, and the admission of various countries. In April 1945 the allies met in San Francisco and wrote the charter of the new organization, and the United Nations officially came into existence on October 24, 1945, following the charter’s ratification by the major powers. All member nations received one vote in the General Assembly, but the five major powers enjoyed the right of veto in the Security Council
.
Disputes in the United Nations between the Soviet Union and the United States paralleled the growing bitterness of the Cold War. In 1946 the Soviet Union and the United States clashed over the issues of Soviet troops in Iran and the control of atomic weapons. In both cases American victories led to increasing Soviet disaffection from the international body. The United States scored another success in 1950, when a boycott of the Security Council by Soviet ambassador Yakov Malik over the seating of China allowed the United States to win United Nations support for military assistance for South Korea.
The United Nations remained largely impotent in the face of a determined superpower. When Soviet troops moved to crush the Hungarian uprising in 1956, appeals for assistance from the
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freedom fighters to the United Nations were ignored. Nevertheless the USSR and the United States agreed that same year to allow United Nations monitors into the Middle East to help end the Suez Crisis. In the fall of 1960 Khrushchev attended the opening session of the General Assembly and delivered a speech attacking the Western powers. During a reply to the Soviet leader, members of his delegation hit their fists on the desk in protest; Khrushchev proceeded to bang the table with his shoe, creating one of the more memorable images of the Cold War. In October 1962, when the USSR denied that it had placed offensive missiles in Cuba, the United States presented photographic evidence of the missile sites at the United Nations and convinced world opinion of its position.
The Soviet view of the United Nations slowly changed over the next two decades, as the emergence of new nations in Africa and Asia shifted the balance of power in the General Assembly away from the United States. After seeing the United Nations as an unfriendly body for its first twenty years of existence, and thereby exercising its right to veto many United Nations resolutions, the Soviet Union began to perceive the General Assembly as a more sympathetic body. Both the USSR and the United States continued to use the United Nations as a forum for influencing other nations. Fierce arguments continued over the Middle East, surrogate wars in Africa, Korean Airline 007, and other issues.